Don Seeks Visa Ban For Nigerian Governors Who Opposed LG Autonomy 

Emeritus professor of crop science ,Professor Philip Adetiloye has urged foreign embassies in Nigeria  to stop issuing travel VISAS to Nigerian governors, their relatives, and political appointees in states where local government autonomy is not operative

Addressing journalists  in Ado-Ekiti on the State of Nation ,the  retired professor from the Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta expressed worry that  nation was been pushed to her  elastic limits due  economic hardships occasioned by  poor  management of its God’s given human and materials  resources .

In his paper entitled “Reform Nigeria or Risk Balkanisation” ,the professor of Crop Science, who  interrogated the various government policies argued that  the policies have failed to address the  nation’s current  challenges.

Adetiloye  said that Nigeria is fast becoming a field laboratory for testing the limits of human endurance also called non-governmental and civil society organizations and organized labour  to  sensitize Nigerians to fight for local and state autonomy in order to achieve true federalism, security, peace, and prosperity in Nigeria.

“This is because local government autonomy will provide grassroots development, open doors for employment generation, and reduce the exodus of hopeless Nigerians to their countries.

Non-governmental and civil society organizations and organized labour should ensure that any governor that stalis local government autonomy or uses overt or covert means to divert local government funds must be prosecuted for theft and such governor must be impeached and should never be voted into any elective office in Nigeria.

Adetiloye lamented that  the  economic war that the  politicians deliberately unleashed on Nigerians for decades continues to fuel the exodus of our youths, top-class gredustes, engineers, doctors, and professors to various countries in search of greener pastures.

 According to a recent poll reported by Abike Dabiri, CEO of Nigerians in Diaspora Comunission, seven out of every ten Nigerian youths want to relecote abroad if they have the opportunity.

He posited that local and state government autonomies are needed institutional frameworks for economic growth and prosperity.

According to him ,the constitutional reforms must be implemented without further delays by the legislative arm to prevent Nigeria from collapsing into anarchy which could arise from possible future agitators for self-determination by ethnic nationalities that believe that their developments are being hampered by the present structure of the Nigerian state. 

“The legislative arm should urgently define the responsibilities of local, statnomy bederal governments withinly define the responsibilities pass the autodragging for local governments and state governments into law without

“The death of several young and old people who were scrambling for food donations from charities in different parts of the country during the Christmas season is sufficient evidence that peverty and begging for crumbs and alms which was limited in the past to a section of the country, has spread across the length and breadth of Nigerin.

“Two policies of the present government; floating of the naira and the removal of fuel subsidies have pushed prices of food, fuel, and other goods and services to unbearable levels, causing people to lament daily about the hardships they face.

“The floating of the naira by the CBN is not working, and it will never work even if CBN raises the exchange rate to 5000 naira to a dollar because the parallel market rate will always be higher than the CBN exchange rate. The parallel market, which is now the informal fifth arm of government after the CBN is richer than the CBN because the parallel has been funded by corrupt politicians, heads of government ministries and agencies through the banks and the CBN under previous governments.

Proffering solutions to the myriads of challenges confronting the nation, Adetiloye said Civic education must be taught in our schools to enable every educated Nigerian to read and understand the constitution and their fundamental human rights, which include freedom of speech se that Nigerians can continue to interrogate their government and political leaders when they are not performing or addressing priority challenges of Nigerians.

He opined that  understanding our fundamental rights will mitgate the tendency of government to silence our voices and intimidate Nigerians in the face of oppression.

The don equally  urged  the Federal and State governments to  stop what he termed ” ineffective agricultural policies”  and programs that continue to worsen food security in Nigeria. They should hand over agricultural development to local governments and private inventors and allow the experts in our universities and our agricultural graduates to contribute to the development of agriculture in Nigeria.

“Federal government ministries of Agriculture, Health, Education, and Technology should be concerned with national regulatory policies and not in development programs. Those should be the responsibility of states and local governments.

“Fuel prices in Nigeria should be lowered to reflect the income level of the middle class while border control and survaillance should be strenghthened to combact smuggling across our borders. Marketers should be licenced to sell petroleum products to neighbouring and other countries at competive prices.

“With more than 274 universities, 205 National Certificate in Education Colleges and 85 Polythecnics and 290 Nursing training institutions in Nigeria, the CBN and the legislative arm of government should stop funding undergraduate and college studies abroad. No honest Nigerian in the public sector can afford fifty to one hundred thousand dollars to fund tuition, boarding and feeding of one student abroad in one academic year. Nigeria Universities and other tertiary institutions are ill-equiped in the sciences, engineering and medicine to run postgraduate studies, as such forex should only be given for overseas graduate students in such fields.

“CBN policy intervention has stopped the downward spiral of the dollar since 1986. The CBN need radical and innovative solutions that will block the loopholes in our banking system in order to stop the downward spiral of the naira.

Professor Adetiloye advocated the  review of the National Youth Service Corp(NYSC) programme in line with current realities. 

“The stated major objective of the National Youth Service was to expose Nigerians to other cultures in Nigeria inorder to foster national unity. The National Youth Service has not increased national unity nor reduced the perceived differences among the ethic nationalities in Nigeria. Nigeria is more divided today than ever due to the insecurity unleashed by Fulani herdsmen on other ethnic nationalities and the severe poverty that can be attributed to well estalished corruption and injustice in allocation of resources in Nigeria. culture of

“The National Youth Service program should be scrapped because it has outlived its usefulness. The extremely poor wages and dehumanization of our graduates in the name of a national youths service makes a mockery of the scheme and hence the need to scrap it. Uneducated migrant labours in Southern Nigeria earn between 125,000 and 200,000 naira per month which is much higher than what University graduates are paid during the so-called national service.

” National service should not be national suffering. In the alternative, the NYS program should be revisited and redesigned to support emergency development programs in which our graduates will work side by side with professional experts to solve practical problems confronting the development of agriculture, infrastructure, health and industries in their own geopolitical zones” He said .